Friday, February 24, 2012

When's the iSelectric getting here?

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, copywriters didn't work on computers. They worked on this beauty. The IBM Selectric Typewriter.

If you've ever typed on one, just seeing the picture instantly brings back the sound of the inter-changable font ball clacking away, not to mention the visceral feedback from the keys as you pounded on them.

The Selectric III pictured had several improvements over previous models. I won't go into them here, but you can read about them all at the IBM Selectric Wikipedia page.

This old school technology - which was quite revolutionary at the time with it's correction ribbon and stationary carriage - has been single-handedly responsible for every keyboard redesign since desktop computers were invented, at least when it comes to haptic feedback (for the haptic-ly challenged, it means using the sense of touch in an interface to convey information to the user - for example, if a key has been pressed).

They were big, clunky and loud, just like my high school girlfriend.

But like her, I loved working on it.

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